Facebook sued over Timeline profile

Facebook is facing legal action from a Chinese web company which claims the
social network has stolen its new timeline feature.

Timeline, Facebook’s new-look profile which allows people to tell the story of their lives on a single page, has just been made mandatory for British Facebook users.

Cubic Network, a four year-old Chinese technology company, which operates a network not to dissimilar to Pinterest, (an American company which allows people to share their favourite items on a virtual pinboard), claims Facebook stole the feature.

The Chinese start-up claims the timeline feature is their own, after launching the same layout in 2008, which shows people’s activity in chronological order.

Xiong Wanli, the founder of Cubic Network, conducted a talk about the timeline feature at Stanford University, which Facebook founder and alumni of the American university, Mark Zuckerberg, is believed to have attended.

Zuckerberg unveiled its ‘Timeline’ in 2011 at f8, the social network’s annual developer’s conference – some three years after Cubic Network showcased the feature.

The Chinese firm is now suing Facebook for potential patent infringement.

Zuckerberg explained the thinking behind Timeline at the conference, saying: “Millions of people curate stories of their lives on Facebook every day and have no way to share them once they fall off your profile page...we have been working on ‘timeline’ all year…it’s the story of your life and completely new way to express yourself.

“It has three pieces: all your stories, your apps and a new way to express who you are.”

He said that wanted people to be able to share “their entire lives” on Facebook and have “total control” over how their content appeared online. Using his own profile to demonstrate the new timeline, Zuckerberg showed photos of himself as a baby which he has inserted into the new profile page which is organized by years.

However, users across the site were up in arms about the forced change, which was first mooted earlier this year and is quite a dramatically different way each member displays their personal information.

One user wrote: “I’m sorry but this is rubbish. I’m surprised Facebook hasn’t included a compulsory DNA profile section (default to public obviously).”

Web users generally do not welcome the redesign of sites and digital services they use every day. Recently when the BBC radically redesigned its home page, the corporation received hundreds of complaints.

However, it remains to be seen how forcing Facebook users into such a radical change of their most personal page on the site, will fare with the majority of members.